Another ‘invitation’ for GMA: This time, to address UNESCO in Paris

She may have given up her ambition to run for re-election in 2004 ("may", her critics still scoff, is a very broad term), but 2003 is shaping up as the still-embattled GMA’s year. Does this remark come from something the President fed me in Malacañang the other night, the usual skeptics and cynics might inquire? Well, the food was good, all right, the conversation was candid, but we’ll leave it at that.

What’s interesting is that even before she got an invitation last weekend from United States President George W. Bush to "visit" him in the White House "in the first half of the year", word came from Paris that Director-General Koichiro Matsuura of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is inviting the President to deliver the Opening Address of the UNESCO’s Plenary Session this September.

This is a signal honor, since only two speakers have been invited to address that conference involving full-dress delegations from 187 UNESCO member-countries. These delegations are usually headed at the Plenary by those nations’ Foreign Ministers or Secretaries or Ministers of Education, and include the UNESCO Secretary-Generals from each capital as well as resident Ambassadors.

President Macapagal-Arroyo will represent the "developing countries" in her address, while the only other speaker is the President of Italy, Carl Azeglio Ciampi, as representative of the "developed countries". That worldwide UNESCO conference, which meets only every two years to decide on the organization’s Biennium Plan and budget, will begin next September 29, at which forum GMA is expected to deliver the opening speech.

I asked the Chief Executive whether she was accepting this invitation, since it is a great honor for our country, but, to my surprise, she replied she had not yet received it! In any event, it’s surely on the way (I hope they sent it by diplomatic pouch, or at least "door-to-door" like most Pinoys in Italy send stuff.) The official letter was dispatched by our envoy in Paris, Ambassador Hector Villaroel, to Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople. Perhaps Ka Blas hasn’t opened his mail yet.

What’s equally significant is the fact that UNESCO Director-General Matsuura chose President GMA for that prominent role although the Philippines had not supported him when he ran for the top post in UNESCO. The former Estrada administration had backed former Ambassador Rosario "Nena" Manalo, foolishly believing Manalo (who had already lost before) had even the faintest chance of winning against the Japanese candidate – and other strong candidates from other countries. Matsuura, as expected, won by a landslide, while Manalo got only two votes. (In the second balloting, one of those two countries even asked to be excused so their delegate could switch his vote to Matsuura.)

Nonetheless, Dr. Matsuura and the UNESCO decided to celebrate World Press Freedom Day in Manila last May, and conduct a media congress which involved journalists from all over Asia. Matsuura and his directors were so impressed by their reception here, and the climate of free speech and discourse that the Philippines‘ standing in headquarters in Paris rates ace-high.

This is an invitation we can’t "refuse" (with apologies to the Godfather, Don Vito Corleone).

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Since she has only 18 months, by her own reckoning, in which to perform, I suppose GMA will have to pace herself with regard to foreign travels. Surely, she’ll have to go to the US at Dubya Bush’s invitation – although no date has been set. Mr. Bush, it must be noted though, has invited a lot of leaders – such as, for instance, South Korea’s incoming president-elect, the not-really-pro-American Roh Moo Hyun, who as one writer put it well "rode his presidential campaign to victory last month on a wave of anger at the United States".

Bush, through Assistant Secretary of State (for East Asia and the Pacific) Jim Kelly – himself a frequent Manila visitor – has asked Roh to come talk things over at the White House after his inauguration next February 25. So, you can see there will be a traffic jam on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC when GMA decides to go there. Malacañang would do well to establish a "date" soonest.

As for South Korea’s incoming President, he has recently been saying soothing words about the US military pre-sence in South Korea, saying that he values the alliance and that, despite the recent very angry anti-American demonstrations – including the big one on New Year’s Eve – Koreans want the US military to stay. (Let’s not forget that some years ago, the same genial Mr. Roh’s political platform was "Yankee, go home!" and that his father-in-law was in jail for decades after the end of the Korean War for "treason", for having allegedly "helped" North Korea in its invasion of South Korea in 1950-53.) Do you think that charming "leopard" has changed his spots?

When I interviewed Mr. Roh last September in Seoul, when he was still a candidate of the Millennium Democratic Party, he held a distinctly starry-eyed view of North Korea and its Dear Leader Kim Jong-il. As I had written in a column that day, I found Roh both brilliant and eloquent when I met with him in the Shilla Palace Hotel, but could not understand why he felt that the Communist hardliner Kim’s hostility towards the South, the US, and the West and that of Pyongyang’s paranoid military hierarchy stemmed from the belief that they were going to be attacked. If we soothed their feelings and assuaged their fears, Mr. Roh had averred, Kim, his politburo, and the 1.1 million North Korean armed forces would turn friendly and warm towards Seoul and the outside world! I thought then: In your dreams, Mr. Roh.

Well, his views expressed last September will have to be taken seriously now, since he’s on the verge of taking over the helm from his departing sponsor, the exiting President Kim Dae-jung, whose "sunshine policy" towards North Korea may now be eclipsed in naïvete by his successor’s.

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According to a dispatch from Seoul yesterday from our friend, International Herald Tribune bureau chief Don Kirk, President-elect Roh proposed last Friday that the US and South Korea establish a "peace structure" on the Korean Peninsula that would induce Pyongyang to open up "to overtures aimed at resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis through dialogue."

"I don’t think there is need to worry about North Korea," he reportedly told foreign business leaders and diplomats. "You can all return to your business."

Gee whiz. I wish it were all as easy as that. Why, over here, we worry even about Ka Roger Rosal, who keeps on popping up on television (he’s a TV favorite) to proclaim that the victory of the revolutionary "people" is near.

I don’t often agree with New York Times writer and quondam columnist Nicholas D. Kristoff (who savaged the Philippines and Filipinos when he was last here), but Kristoff – who won a Pulitzer with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, for their reporting on China’s Tiananmen democracy movement and its suppression – wrote a very perceptive column after interviewing Mr. Roh. It was published yesterday by the New York Times and simultaneously by the IHT.

"Throughout the interview," remarked Kristoff in his pungent and typically infuriating style, "olive branches to North Korea piled at our feet. Roh referred to Kim respectfully as Chairman Kim, and kept emphasizing the importance of holding dialogue with trust."

"‘People’s attitudes change according to your own attitude,’ Roh said, as if we could tame Kim by offering him cookies and kimchi’"

I think he was very sincere in conducting a dialogue with President Kim Dae-jung. If you treat someone with mistrust, he will come back to you with more mistrust and more skepticism, and this will make the problem more difficult.

"‘Many Koreans believe that once the United States adopts a policy of dialogue,’ Roh added, ‘that will solve the problem.’"

"Kristoff commented: This seems hopelessly naïve."

Kristoff concluded that he liked to see American bases remain in South Korea, but right now (he said) "the Americans are taken for granted, and the military relationship isn’t working. The US can’t want to protect South Koreans more than they want to be protected."

Indeed, this has puzzled me, too.

Kristoff in his customarily brash way said the awful truth without pussyfooting around it. He ventured that America need to convey the message: "Look, if you don’t want us, we ‘re out of here. Why should we pay $3 billion a year, not counting the cost of the tanks and the planes, to keep 37,000 troops here so Korean ingrates can slap them around on the subways?"

Yeah. Since they’re not there to protect Itaewon’s shops et cetera, it might make sense for the Americans to "go home" or else send those 37,000 troops to the Gulf where there’s a real war brewing.

As for me, personally, I don’t really lose any sleep over what North Korea might do. They won’t waste a "nuke" on attacking the Philippines – we’re accomplishing our own "self-destruction", thank you, without any help from the Nokors. My only concern, really, is that Pyongyang might aim a missile somewhere else but nuke us by mistake.